Treating chronic conditions must become a core focus area.

Chronic conditions are some of the deadliest in the nation as well as the most costly. According to Sheri Dodd’s keynote, the treatment of chronic conditions is an issue that stands outside party lines as it dominates the nation’s healthcare spending more than any other form of disease. Diabetes, COPD and heart failure are the three most expensive diseases in the nation; however, all of them are manageable and, in most cases, preventable. With appropriate steps and predictive technology, we can prevent the risk of chronic conditions and slow down a current trend of spending that is growing at a higher rate than the GDP.

Too much is spent on healthcare.

According to Dr. Georgiou’s opening statements, as a nation we spend 18 percent of our GDP directly on healthcare. This number is projected to grow in coming years. However, this isn’t due to greater illnesses and health problems. It’s due to an out-of-date payment model for physicians, regulatory problems that make solutions unavailable for users and lack of maximum utilization for healthcare labor.

Combining two fields

Healthcare and digital technology run at different paces. Healthcare must slow down to test and experiment, while digital technology must run to keep up with trends and users. When these two industries collide, lines can be crossed and innovation can stagnate. Jake Holdreith of Robins Kaplan, explained that regulated culture of the drug world and the unregulated culture of the tech world will sometimes conflict with each other in unintended ways. Sometimes the conflicts cause law suits and restrictive regulations for those hoping to innovate in digital healthcare.

Expansion, precision, efficiency

These are the calls that digital healthcare must respond to in order to create effective change nationally and globally. Throughout the day, various speakers went out of their way to explain that healthcare technology should be effective in providing better treatment for more people at less cost than the current alternative. Breakthroughs with wearable technology and telehealth are demonstrating this idea by creating effective treatment for more people in a virtual healthcare space that reduces medical labor costs and patient visit time.

Cheers to our speakers & sponsors.

Thanks to the support of our speakers and sponsors over 350 thought leaders in healthcare and technology came together to learn about one of the fastest growing markets in the nation.